Pharos Energy plc (PHAR) Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Pharos Energy plc Preliminary results presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, however, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Katherine Roe, CEO. Good afternoon.

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us this afternoon. We do have a short presentation to summarize our events from last year, our financial results and a few operational updates, and then we will open up to some Q&A. So thank you again. Just to start us off, I'll provide a brief introduction. As some of you may be aware, I joined Pharos about 20 months ago as CEO, and the priority was very much about extracting as much value from the existing assets and ensuring that the balance sheet was strong and robust. So today, reporting full year results from 2025 is my first as a full year in seat at Pharos. And we are delighted to announce that we've been able to deliver on some of those key levers that we identified in order to move forward to extracting value from the existing assets. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. We have 2 jurisdictions in Vietnam and Egypt, both producing and both jurisdictions have appetite for exploration as well. At the end of 2024, we were able to secure license extensions in Vietnam for our 2 producing fields, TGT and CNV. That was really critical to us because it opened up a new development campaign, which is that 6-well offshore drilling program that we really are well advanced in, and we'll talk a little bit more later in the presentation. It's the largest investment campaign in our Vietnam assets since the original development. And as I say, it was really only made possible because of those license extensions secured at the end of '24. So a lot of the first half of 2025 was spent preparing for that program, putting everything in place, and we were able to commence that last year. We do expect that to complete on track. Again, it is on time and budget by the first half of this year. That's really underpinning the stable foundation production of our business. It's the majority of our production, it's also the majority of our free cash flow generation. But really importantly, those commitment appraisal wells that you see on the bottom left bullet there, TGT-18X and CNV-5X, those, if successful, could drive that incremental production growth that we've guided of around 20% above just arresting natural decline and giving us that uplift. So it's been a really important campaign. We've been able to fully fund it by internally generated free cash flow. And as I say, the economics supported by the license extensions secured at the end of 2024. So exciting update on Vietnam. Again, we'll talk more operationally about that later on. Egypt, again, another successful year for us in terms of meeting some important milestones. A big part of our job in Egypt was to consolidate the 2 existing licenses into 1 new agreement. The real drive behind that was to give ourselves longer time, again, extension of time on those licenses, but also improved fiscal terms. We do summarize those improved fiscal terms later on in the presentation. That really improved the economics to drive further investment. So last year was a relatively low activity year for us in Egypt whilst we negotiated these improved terms. That was concluded in September. Really importantly, we were able to agree a retroactive effective date, which is the 5th of October. And that's important because this consolidation is still subject to formal government ratification, which will happen during the course of this year. But we -- because of that retroactive date, we're actually able to benefit from those increased fiscal terms from the end of -- for October last year. One of the other concerns in Egypt that's been a huge priority for us is the recovery of our receivables position. We saw a material and growing receivable balance over the last several years, and it was really critical to us that we reduced that and have been in negotiation or discussion with EGPC, our government stakeholder about the best way to reduce that receivables balance. We were able to secure a one-off $20 million payment at the end of last year, the last day of 2025, which meant we were able to really boost our year-end cash balance, which you can see in the third column here. What's even more important, and again, we'll talk about it later on, is the continued recovery of receivables. So whilst this one-off payment was very material and critical to us, we do need and continue to need visibility and continued payments as we go forward. So there's regularity to that payment that we see every month. That has been happening, and we're able to reduce our balance even further from year-end to a balance of just over $6 million today. So again, this is really giving us renewed confidence about reinvesting in a disciplined way back into Egypt, mitigating that payment risk and allowing for improved economics going forward. With that in mind, we've agreed a 6-well work program with our partner for this year, modest program, but one that we feel should be sufficient to increase volumes from the current level. We are about to commence that 6-well work program with the first rig identified for the first well, which we should be starting shortly. So all of those activities last year really driven the financial performance for last year, a very strong position. We remain debt-free with a strong cash balance and a strong operating cash flow result. That balance sheet strength has also been able to allow us to continue our sustainable dividend. We do have a dividend policy, but we've been able to go a bit above and beyond that and declare that 10% increase today, ensuring we try to strike the right balance between capital return to shareholders, but allowing ourselves flexible financial flexibility to pursue growth. We are now looking at additional growth into the portfolio. As I say, I think last year was very successful in being able to deliver value from the existing assets to put things in place to allow us to move forward with extracting value, but we now also want to add to that with additional assets into the portfolio. And we are identifying appropriate assets to come in, really looking at existing near-term production assets. We do have our own high-impact exploration in Vietnam, which we'll again talk to a little bit later on. So exploration is lower down the priority list than near term or existing production. I think it's just worth saying in this introduction slide that we are clearly in a relatively volatile scenario with commodity prices. We are seeing that across the globe. We are very fortunate that we operate in jurisdictions that have been unaffected by the Middle East conflict, but we are taking advantage of higher oil prices. We do receive a premium to Brent for our product in Vietnam, and we've been able to take advantage. Sue will talk a little bit later on about our hedging policy. But both assets are for domestic consumption. We've had no impact from the conflict. It's very much business as usual, but even better to some extent because of being able to take advantage of that higher oil price. And that's really capable of driving increased free cash flow generation. So we're in a very stable, robust place, good set of results today, but importantly, again, another year of activity in order to achieve further value. So that's to set the scene, I suppose, and I'll hand over to Sue.

Thanks, Katherine. So in terms of the final outturn for '25, strong set of results. So revenue of $115 million, which was very, very good considering the Brent price was sort of circa $69 for last year. We were able to finish the year-end with a $40 million in the bank, obviously doubled up by that Egyptian receivable from EGPC there on the 31st of December, which was terrific news. In terms of cash flow from operations, we did actually increase cash flow from operations from the prior year even though we had that decrease in the Brent price, so it's $55.6 million. In terms of the Egyptian receivables, very important for us, and you can see the history of those and actually getting that position down to $7.4 million by the end of the year was great news. And indeed, it continues to fall. So circa $6.1 million as we sit here today. What's also worth mentioning is that the EGPC have said openly into the market that they expect to pay all outstanding debt by second quarter this year. So we should expect that to fall further and actually get to a position where traditionally, we just see a month in arrears as would be normal. So that's something to look forward to as we move forward. If we could move to the next slide. Thank you. So strong cash flow. So with $30.5 million after exceptionals on a free cash flow basis, $2.9 million coming in there from our farm-down that we did with IPR a few years back. We've got one more year to follow through from that contingent consideration and then that will be the farm-down completed. But a strong set of results there. We spent roughly $28 million on the CapEx program. Of course, the main majority of that going into Vietnam into that program of work that Katherine was talking about. So we'd actually completed 2 of the infill wells on TGT by the year-end. They had been brought into production by the year-end, and we had started on the TGT-18X appraisal well and indeed in CNV on the infill well. So as you'll see -- as we come on to later, you'll see the final piece of the capital program coming out in the first half this year. With that, could we move on, please? So in terms of dividends to shareholders, obviously, Katherine has announced that we're making an increase in the dividends this year, 10% increase. We have done that over a number of years, the last 4 years since we've been back to paying dividends. That doesn't mean that, that is a program that will continue. Obviously, we look at each year individually as to where the capital allocation goes. Obviously, with that $20 million coming in right at the year-end, that gave us the confidence to increase the dividends there. So -- but as I say, it shouldn't be taken as a given, but certainly, we look at it each year on what should go into that dividend piece. Then if we move on. In terms of hedging, obviously, very important particularly with the current pricing and volatility in the market. We are not subject to an RBL or facility, so we're not forced into hedging. We do, however, take a sort of a protectionist, if you like, support to the balance sheet to make sure that we hedge a minimum position of our portfolio to make sure that we're protecting the downside. But equally, we have an opportunity to feature in some of that upside as we move forward. So at the moment, very modest, so just 24% that's been hedged in '26 and just at the moment, a modest 7% into first half next year. We are seeing prices that we can take opportunity of we may fill a little bit more of that first half '27 and also bring a bit more into the second half and indeed '26. So we will, as I say, layer that in, but it's protection and it allows the upside to our shareholders of the oil commodity price. And then in terms of the capital investment program for '26, so $50 million overall, circa 80% of that obviously going into Vietnam. That's that continuation of the 6-well program coming through. That will essentially all be spent by the first half '26. The Egyptian piece, as Katherine mentioned, obviously, we've got the receivables position has come down considerably. We're also seeing receivables that are being received every month. So a constant pattern of that. So that going back to putting money into the ground in Egypt with that 6-well commitment for this year's budget. So hopefully, that puts us in good stead as we move forward on 2026. And with that, I'll hand back to Katherine.

Thank you, Sue. We just have a few slides just to recap on our operational activities. So just starting with Vietnam. Just a reminder here on the left-hand side, the guidance that we published at the beginning of the year. That range is really -- is partly dictated by the current drilling campaign. So just in the middle section here, again, just a reminder that all our oil is sold domestically, and we do get that strong premium to Brent. So very stable, steady production. We're producing out of these fields for 2 decades. And I think really what we were trying to work through here is it's -- they're good quality fields, what can we do to get more? How can we maximize the recovery from both of these fields. So that was really what was driving the drilling campaign. Again, as a recap, we had 2 commitment wells. That's one appraisal well in TGT and one appraisal well in CNV. The 6-well program in total, 5 of those 6 wells have now been drilled. The 3 infill wells in TGT are producing and on stream as is the one in CNV. Again, all of these wells are drilled from existing infrastructure, existing platforms ready to be tied into existing infrastructure immediately. So it's been very successful. We have a lot of operational capability in our joint operating model. So again, very successful. It can sometimes be taken for granted that these are relatively challenging operational wells to drill. But again, having been able to deliver this campaign 5 out of the 6 wells so far on time and on budget, and adjusting any challenges that we found along the way has been a real success and a real testament to the JOC model. The TGT appraisal well has finished drilling and is in the process of some detailed testing. We probably need another 3 to 4 weeks before we have the full results of that testing. So we are anticipating a more fulsome update to the market probably towards the end of April for that TGT appraisal well, pretty important in terms of the incremental volumes that, that could potentially deliver. The CNV commitment appraisal well has just commenced drilling. So that's a relatively long well. Again, we'll need another 4 to 5 weeks probably of drilling before we have a result on that. So there may be a couple of updates on TGT and CNV during the course of April and May. And then we'll be able to give a bit more of an indication as to where we are in that guidance range. Again, very comfortable with that range given Q1 performance, but it's the incremental growth that could come from the appraisal wells that we'll wait to see. We've said before that, that could potentially unlock additional development. And again, we'll need to spend probably Q3 assessing those results and determining whether an additional development program can work economically and is viable. But again, the philosophy for us is very much to extract as much as we can from those existing fields because they worked so well for us. They underpin our entire business and to be able to extract as much as possible clearly makes sense if the economics work. We have very good support from PetroVietnam. Again, a well-trodden path in terms of operations. So it's really about delivering as much from those fields as we possibly can. On the exploration side, again, a really key important part of our story. We have high-impact deepwater frontier exploration offshore Vietnam. We were able to secure a 2-year license extension last June. Again, critical for us. We were discussing whether that should be a year, 2 years really has given us maximum optionality to try to find a partner and a rig to drill our prospect A, which has been identified as the first prospect to drill in Block 125. We've started a structured formal process. That is ongoing. It does take a bit of time. We've got some active discussions going on as we speak. I think what we found that's been very encouraging is that high-impact frontier exploration is very much back on the agenda for a lot of the majors. It is being prioritized again. And clearly, Vietnam and Southeast Asia is an area of priority for a lot of those. We are moving through various stage gates and discussions. So that will continue to progress until the point that we have a tangible view that we can share with the market. But that does remain a priority for us as a really way to unlock value from our overall Vietnam portfolio, which I think leads in quite well to the next slide, which is just designed to give you a picture of how we see growth being extracted from our existing Vietnam portfolio. You can see there the existing production underpinning the business and everything we do. The blue middle piece here is the current campaign that we're drilling that could unlock additional value if we have appraisal success in TGT and CNV. And then the real value piece that could drive even further is that exploration success in 125, 126, just designed to give you an idea of what we're trying to achieve and how to go about it. I think with that, we just move on to Egypt. Just to recap on Egypt. Again, you can see here our guidance. We'd very much like to get towards the upper end of that range this year. It will require more activity. We had a very low activity year last year, which is why production was relatively stable at the 1,300 barrels a day. We did need improved economics in order to proceed with a bit more activity. And that's really an explanation as to why it was low last year. We have started the year with a 6-well program agreed with our operator, IPR. That is a program that's in our 2026 work program and commitment. And as I say, we have a drilling rig secured for the first well, which we expect to start shortly. That will really allow us to unlock some of this value that's been sitting there for the last couple of years, whilst we create an environment in Egypt that is more valuable for us to reinvest and provides enhanced economics to do so. So we really did need those improved fiscal terms, which we just summarized here. Obviously, we announced these at the time of securing that concession agreement. But again, important that we have that retroactive effective date, so that we can start benefiting from those improved terms from that point rather than having to wait for the parliamentary ratification, which will happen during the course of this year. So we are starting to see things change in Egypt in terms of mitigating that payment risk that we talked about earlier with the full recovery of receivables, which we expect improved terms in order to enhance our economics and an alignment with our operator on an appropriate work program. So we've got all the pieces in place to try to unlock some of that value, which I think leads on to that slide, Minh-Anh. Thank you. Again, just a sort of picture of what we're trying to achieve here and how to go about it. Again, existing production on the left-hand side, what can we do as near-term exploration and development to enhance that and then obviously medium- to longer-term exploration going forward. We do have a fairly good exploration success rate in El Fayum, which was around 58% when we're drilling with seismic. We will need to do a little bit more 3D in order to unlock some of that. But again, there's a pathway now to being able to unlock some of this value that has been latent and unable to be unlocked for the last couple of years. So I'll just move on to an outlook slide before we open up. We put this in here really to show our free cash flow generation capabilities at various oil price scenarios, pretty important given the current environment, it wasn't that long ago that we were still working on $65 short, medium term. So the picture does change quite significantly with these higher oil prices, and we're in the fortunate position to be able to take advantage of that. We do run the business as a relatively conservative model. Again, this is an internal model that has relatively conservative assumptions. But when we layer on that forward curve there, which we've done, you can see that this business, even as the base case production is capable of delivering substantial material free cash flow generation. And again, as a reminder, we're unlevered, and we have full flexibility for our hedging policy. So we really sort of can take advantage even if one thinks that $100 Brent is sustainable, we do see that forward curve moving with every day and to be able to have a business that can take advantage of that for the benefit of shareholders is a real positive for us. So I'll just finish on the last slide, an outlook slide, protected growth, but I think more so than that, we have the ability to capture upside. We do try to strike the right balance between capital growth and that income yield to shareholders. The dividend is important, but we need to get the right balance with allowing ourselves financial flexibility to grow as well. We've done really well in terms of our existing assets to put those levers in place to enable us to extract as much value, and we're really pleased that we've had a successful year last year. But I think we are also aware of the need to build additional scale outside of the existing portfolio. And that's something that we've really focused on as an initiative, looking for appropriate assets or ways to increase our scale and moving from a 5,000 to 6,000 barrel a day business to 10,000 and beyond. And again, I can't emphasize obviously the importance of 125, 126. It does take time, but it remains a priority. And I think renewed interest from some of those important potential farming partners has given us some cause for encouragement and could be very material for shareholders. So again, thank you all for listening. Really proud to have a business that's resilient and robust in a very volatile macro scenario. We feel very fortunate that we're in jurisdictions that are not impacted in any way operationally through some of the conflict and also we're in an advantageous place to take advantage of those higher oil prices and have stable production that's capable of supporting additional growth. So thank you all. I think we can...

[Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard. Minh-Anh, perhaps I could hand over to you. As you can see, we've had a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and thank you to all the investors who submitted those. If you could just read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Fantastic. Thank you, Paul. I'll now go through some questions which were pre-submitted to the company. First question is with regards to the recent conflict. What is the route to market currently being used for Egyptian production? Has this changed in recent weeks? And are there any security concerns?

Thank you, Minh-Anh. Thank you for the question. It's very much business as usual with Egypt. So we have no disruptions. Our oil is trucked, continued without any conflict, no security concerns. Obviously, we check in with our Cairo office and our operations team on a daily basis, and we haven't seen any impact to date. Sue, do you want to add anything?

No.

So very much business as usual. I mean, I think without wanting to get too political, Egypt remains politically neutral, and it very much tries to not get wrapped up in some of those conflict issues. One key area for Egypt, which I guess, has come into sharper focus with events in Iran has been the need for energy security. And I think really what we're seeing when we talk to the ministry and to EGPC is that need for energy security is what's -- is driving this commitment to repay outstanding receivables to IOCs because they really would like to see further investment from all of us, all of our international players from the majors down to some of the smaller independents like ourselves. So mitigating that payment risk is clearly the first piece of the puzzle to unlock further investment and the need for increased domestic supply in Egypt is a priority. But going back to the original question, there's been no disruption and no security concerns in Egypt.

Fantastic. Thank you, Katherine. What about Vietnam? What difference has the Hormuz situation made to realized prices from Vietnam production? Are there any export constraints or price caps being imposed by host country? And is the company being required to redirect more production for domestic consumption?

Yes. Thank you for the question. Again, no impact. We feel very fortunate that that's the case. All of our production in Vietnam is sold domestically for domestic -- ultimately domestic power generation. So we're not reliant on any export. If anything, we are encouraged to increase volumes as much as we can. I think we have been able to do that in recent weeks to meet some of that demand. But otherwise, very much business as usual. So I haven't seen any disruption either operationally or financially.

That's great. Thank you, Katherine. Probably one for you, Sue. I know you've touched on this on the slide already, but can you clarify the current hedging position and how much of our oil this year has exposure to the current oil price? Also now that we are in net cash, what is the future hedging strategy?

Yes. I suppose I've addressed it probably in the presentation itself. So those -- sorry, if we could just move to the next slide. There we go. So currently, as I say, '26 is only sort of 24% hedged. We're obviously leaving that unhedged position. So we've got a cap and a floor there for the first and second halves. What we are looking at is whether we layer in a little bit extra into '26 in order to give us some of that -- not protection, but to get some of that upside into the portfolio. And we are looking at that currently. And in terms of first half, again, I think we will -- we are looking at whether we layer in a little bit more into the hedging. Traditionally, we would do between 20% and 30% hedged and leave the rest unhedged for it to react to the price curve. So that's traditionally our hedging position. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Thank you, Sue. In terms of receivables, what are the expectations for reducing Egyptian receivables further to normal commercial levels?

Yes. And again, hopefully, we've sort of been able to address that one as well. $7.4 million, we finished the year on. A great position with that $20 million bullet that came in 31st of -- actually 31st of December, which was great. We had known it was coming for some time, but brilliant to have got that across the line in December. We continue to see money coming in, so $6.1 million indeed, we've already heard today that we'll be getting some more in over the coming days. And of course, there is a commitment out there in the public from EGPC to pay all outstanding debt by the end of the second quarter. That's public knowledge now, but we had confirmation ourselves 2, 3 weeks ago. So I think, yes, a good position, which obviously means that if we can get stable receivables from that, that gives you the encouragement to put money back in the ground for investment, which I think is really important with all of those 2P and 2C resources to -- reserves and resources to go after.

Thank you, Sue. Before Jan left, it was mentioned that Pharos had tested the market for potential divestment of Egypt. And at the time, there wasn't an appetite for the asset. Now that EGPC are making significant payments, what is the longer-term strategy? Should we perform a strategic review of Egypt, reconsider potential divestment and focus on Southeast Asia?

Yes. Thanks, Minh-Anh. It's always a source for debate, and we'll look at anything that can extract value for shareholders. I think our current view of our Egyptian assets, they do -- they are self-contained. They are self-funded. I think we've been clear about that previously that the point at which that changes, we do need to look harder. But whilst they remain self-funding, and we have an improved environment, we would be leaving value on the table to divest those assets today. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't look to do so if there was an appropriate or an attractive proposition. Likewise, with any asset, we can't be wedded to any assets if there's a way to deliver value for shareholders. That's always the bottom line. But our view on Egypt is it's an improving macro situation. Many years ago, you could have sold receivables position for x cents in the dollar. I think what we're demonstrating is the capability to recover receivables dollar for dollar. So we wouldn't have made the right decision to sell receivables for $0.80, $0.70, whatever it may be in the dollar, when actually we have a line of sight on being able to recover all of those, as Sue mentioned, even the remaining $6 million balance by the end of Q2. So we always keep it on mind. It's part of the ongoing strategy at Pharos, how best to build scale, how best to deliver value. We obviously enjoy both of our jurisdictions. And there are lots of opportunities in Southeast Asia, many of which we've looked at. So we don't see the ability to add to the portfolio as being hindered at all by having the Egyptian assets. So I hope that answers that question.

Thank you, Katherine. Along the same lines. The market is clearly not interested in small-scale oil producers. This is not a situation that is specific to Pharos. What has the company done in the pursuit of increasing scale inorganically? Can you provide some color on the type of acquisition you're interested in? And is your preference for an asset acquisition or a merger?

Yes. Look, I think we entirely are aligned with the view of relevance, scale, economies of scale that can come with that, efficiencies, all of those things. And we do not want to be sitting here as a 5,000, 6,000 barrel a day business for the medium term. So we are looking at ways to grow, ways to scale and as I say, take advantage of some of those obvious cost synergies. That can be done in a number of ways. We're open-minded. We are looking at a few asset opportunities at the moment. In terms of type of assets, as I say, we would avoid high-impact, high-risk exploration because we have that already in our portfolio, which has to be prioritized, and that's the Vietnam 125, 126 that we talked about. We would also probably stay away from heavy CapEx, heavy development expenditure that's required just due to the return on capital employed and the time frame. So really looking at current producing assets, near-term producing that we could add some value to. So the type of play, the regional focus, obviously, if we can leverage existing relationships in country, those are the priorities in terms of screening new opportunities.

That's great. Thank you, Katherine. Moving on to 125, 126. We have been told for many years that we are seeking a partner for 125 and that we've been very close on a number of occasions. What is the exact current status? Has the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz increased positive attention on our Vietnam asset? What's the earliest possible time line for some progress on 125, 126? When do you think the process will be finished?

All good questions. It is very much about timing, I think, with these opportunities. As I say, we are fortunate that we're in a cycle where high impact, particularly offshore exploration is very much back in focus in a way that it might not have been a few years ago. So I think we have seen the macro sentiment change in our favor. I think what also has gone in our favor is reaching out to a lot of market peers in a structured way that, as I say, had not been done before at Pharos since we put that in place last year. I think the recent conflict hasn't made much of a difference either way positively or negatively. Our discussions are continuing because I think if you are looking at 125, 126 as an opportunity, it's very much a long-term opportunity. It's not just about the first well. It's about developing a whole new basin, and that could be a multiple number of wells and a very large campaign. So you can see that it lends itself to a big company, a major that looks at it to the longer term. So I think what's going on right now is not having an impact. But these discussions take time, unfortunately. They do take time. As I say, there's a number of stage gates that a lot of these companies need to go through, and we just have to be a bit patient. So I do appreciate that it's been something that we've talked about. But we have enough encouragement that we'll keep those discussions going until the point that we can say more.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Katherine. I believe we have some time to go through some questions which were sent in live during the presentation. The first question is, Katherine, you suggest you're looking into adding assets for growth. However, you're doing so at a time when energy prices have risen from $60 Brent to around $100. Surely, it would have been more sensible to identify acquisition a year ago when you still had a strong balance sheet.